


Ways to Never Say Goodbye

by oftheangels



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 2nd Person, APH England - Freeform, Angst, Hetalia, M/M, Sad, UkCan, aph, aph canada - Freeform, disgustingly flowery, engcan - Freeform, i cried while writing this im ashamed, its arthurs pov btw sorry its kinda confusing, maple tea - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftheangels/pseuds/oftheangels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Matthew is young and head over heels and Arthur is is good at lying to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ways to Never Say Goodbye

ONE

_throat_

You see him once and you can't keep your eyes off of him. You see him twice and you can't keep your _mind_ off of him. His blonde hair enthralls you, his freckled skin traps you, his violet eyes encase you like an amethyst crysalys. Your time has limits but his vibrancy has never seen a fence. You speak infrequently and stare often. You are not in love. You want him to touch you like the sunlight touches him, like he might make you young again. You are not in love. It has only been three days, but your nights become weary without his voice to fill them and there are only so many excuses you can use before showing up at the little sunlit cafe during his shift, and his shift only, will get suspicious and you _cannot_ cannot risk getting kicked out. You need his presence now like blood needs oxygen. The darkness is unbearable now and you meet him in the alley behind the cafe one afternoon. He has flowers in his hair and a snowflake knitted onto his sweater. You can't speak for minutes and maybe he can't either or maybe he is assessing you, trying to pick you apart just like you have been doing your whole life with no luck. He smiles at you and your heart flutters with the weariness of a bird that has had too many trips ending in face-to-glass impact. He asks you a few questions that you can't bother remember over the sound of his voice. You give him answers that you can't bother remembering over the sound of your own recklessness. Suddenly his hands are on your wrists and his lips are on your throat and it takes a few minutes of standing in the fading light for you to recognise that you’ve got a date tomorrow.

TWO

_would you_

Your date is spectacular, considering the circumstances and your usual dating failure-to-success ratio. You take him to a small diner as far away from your own hotel as you can, and he coerces you into getting a ravioli dish that he’s almost certain you’ll love. You do love it, but at this point you can’t let him know that and you spend a chunk of your conversation time making a scene about it and reducing him to fits of laughter. You take to the rough and shiny sound like a fish to water and you never want to let it go. He throws breadsticks at you and you drop an ice cube down his shirt and it's like he’s a lover you finally got back to after a long trip and not a man you just met. You learn that he lives in a tiny apartment with flowers in the windows and that his neighbors are always holding parties. You learn that he has begun to regret living so close to the university because he hardly gets any sleep anymore over the sound of the bustling barely-not-teens overhead. You learn he takes art classes sometimes and he wants to be a florist like his mother. You learn about his home in Canada and the forest that surrounds it, about the birds that come to the windows and about the snow that falls over the lawn in the winter. You tell him more than he probably wants to know. He doesnt complain but his blink faster at some parts of your violent monologue and his eyebrows pinch together slightly whenever you voice gets a little wavery. You consider not telling him your entire life story, but restraint has never been your strong suit and it all pours out before you can think of the next word to say.  It gets unreasonably late, the sky outside is dark and the waitress is giving you both odd looks. He smiles at you, telling you what a lovely time he's had and “Would you like to come over for coffee?” in a way that shortens your breath for a few seconds more than it should. You smile at him (his cheeks are red) and accept his invitation. You leave with his hand warm and heavy in yours.

THREE

_carpet_

It’s not as though you expected only coffee, but it is also not as though you allowed yourself to expect more. He sits in front of you with a smile and nice china teacup that you think he may not have gotten out if you were anyone else, but that might just be your narcissism poking through. You had thought you laid the selfish bits of your heart to rest long ago, but the young man pouring cream into your earl grey reminds you violently of all the worth you had once put into yourself. Maybe it’s the way his feet touch yours under the table, or how the way his lips curl around the rim of his cup promises _so much more than you have_ , but he’s there, reminding you of who you once were. You’ll hate yourself for it later, (because he’s so young, because he deserves more) but you don’t let coffee last long. You were never patient in your best years and his hands in yours bring out the years you were at your absolute _worst_. You’re violent and harsh and you have _no boundries_ and his eyes are asking you how you ever forgot that. _Remember who you are,_ he says. _Show me who you are._ And you do. You show him the parts of you that you tried so very hard to destroy, those parts that tried so very hard to destroy you, and _god_ does it feel good. His skin is soft and sun kissed against your pale and rough hands. You grip his golden hair in your fists, he grips your heart in his. You pant out every word you know until you only know his name. His hips and lips and hands and neck are bruising with all the colours of the sunset you missed while staring at him. The sky outside is dark and dotted with stars, you don’t look outside because something dark and heavy in his hot breath on your lips has you captured. His breathing peaks. His breathing slows down. Your hands run up and down the sides of his thighs and his torso and rest on his face, cupping his cheeks and running your thumb across his lips. He presses his fingers into the flesh of your back and, with a laugh, tells you that “From this angle you look like a proper lover”. You smile without thinking about what he’s said and touch your noses and foreheads together and look at him with darkened green eyes. You kiss him slow and hard, the only way you know how. He pulls you down and wraps his arms around you. You fall asleep with his head against your heartbeat and your shoulders against his dark red carpet.

FOUR

_daisy_

You wake up before him to the sun piercing your eyes through his curtains. The red carpet beneath you is warm and comforting and you don’t want to leave it and his body above yours is even warmer. You push him away, cradling him in your arms for just a moment and smiling about the way his breath puffs his hair away from his face. You catch yourself and frown into the sunlight in the window that seems much more harsh now. Sunlight should not be judging you. Your frown deepens and turns your whole face sour and you race out of the room with your clothes bundled in your arms. The boy in the other room sleeps soundly and heavily and you pour both of you mugs of coffee from his kitchen and your head starts to spin. _You should be happy_ , the curtains of the kitchen window scream at you. _You should hold your head up and go take that coffee into the bedroom and drink it with that beautiful and interesting man_ , the kitchen curtains have daisies printed on them. _You fucking coward,_ the daisies say. You pull your hand away from the cup of coffee you had poured for yourself. Spitefully, you glare at the daisies for the gall they have to call you a coward. You realize how stupid you’re being and run a tired hand through your hair. The golden haired young man you left that morning wakes up minutes after you leave and he sighs into his coffee while staring at the number you scribbled for him on the back of an old receipt.

FIVE

_to card_

You don't quite know how this happened to you but you're not sure you want to question it, because everything feels so much better than it usually does, and the air that hits your skin is cooler and the fabric if your buttondown feels less constricting than usual and this time when you walk into his kitchen the daisy curtains smile at you. You are an asshole, you acknowledge and you despise it but it's what you are and you cannot for the life of you, figure out what that beautiful young boy saw in you. Something he saw in you that made you worth the humiliation of a skipped breakfast and a phone number on the table. But there was something and if you think about it too long you start to wonder if it's really very good or really very very bad, so you don't think about it. You run hands roughly through your hair all the way to his apartment and there's a naive delusion somewhere in you that makes you think that if you tug your hair enough you’ll tug him out of your head. You really don't expect the day you experience. Youre used to biting lips and whiskey and skin but he's so different from anything you've ever had and you spend the day eating the best pancakes you've ever tasted and watching Titanic in his tiny living room. Relaxation is not something you do often, but here you are, melting into the suede of his couch, melting into _him_. He leans against you and your heart jolts, at first with surprise, and then with heavy heavy regret. You card your fingers through his hair and try to forget about the liquid lead that's settled into the bottom of your lungs and the back of your head. The sound of his breathing and the warmth of his chest lull you to sleep in the middle of the day and you wake up from a dream you don't remember, wishing that you could have slept forever,

SIX

_white tile_

You pack the next day. Your hotel room is white walled and spacious and empty( _lonely_ ). Showers and folded button ups have kept your mind at bay for the better part of the morning and your subconscious is just beginning to think you can get away unscathed when he texts you. The vibration of your phone shakes you like an earthquake and you know who it is without having to read it. In fact, you don't read it at all. You delete it blindly and block the number before you can properly think about it. You sit alone in the ugly and uncomfortable hotel armchair (because that's how you feel, ugly and uncomfortable) and you don't process it. You have spent so many years perfecting this pacified state, and its scares you so much that this boy had been able to shake you in so few days. Trembling hands cradle your head and you grip at your scalp and flex your biceps, trying to release the tension in you. But it doesn't work because there no tension in your body only in _you_ in your _soul_. The table next to you shudders violently as you jump up and collide with it, you pace and pace and pace around until you grab the hotel pen and pad of paper. With heavy breathing and stinging eyes you try to write him a note, something to save this trainwreck that you've left in your wake. _Matthew, I wish we could be together but I do not think this is going to work out. Matthew, I have to leave but I want to see you again please call me. Matthew, I'll see you again someday I promise. Matthew, I'm sorry if I hurt you I don't  have a choice. Matthew, please don't cry over me. Matthew, I love you._ You leave the hotel room without a note, and your vision gets more blurry with every bunched up paper you toss away. When you walk to the airport it starts raining just like it does in London. You make up a fantasy in your mind to distract you from the water droplets soaking your shirt, you imagine that if he came to London it would never rain again, that he would bring the sunshine with him. Inside the airport your suitcase rolls peacefully over the white tiles behind you. You step onto the plane.

SEVEN

_atlantic_

He's  in shambles when you leave. He doesn't get a note or a call or a rose in the mail, he just gets a blocked number and an inability to go to a certain diner without crying. He tears down the daisy curtains in his kitchen while you open up the red ones in your lounge. He cries for a night, you wish he wouldn't cry but he does. His shifts at the cafe get longer and the classes at his college get more demanding and the circles under his eyes get deeper and he's too busy cursing you for not being there to wash the troubles away to notice himself falling apart. You should have known and you should have stayed, because he's so young and he falls so easily and he doesn't have the coldness you do and he doesn't want to die alone in his own head. So while you swallow your cold tea and let your garden die he drives out to the coast of New York and screams at the Atlantic ocean. His voice wavers and shakes and cuts off and he chokes on his words and on his tears but he doesn't stop screaming until his throat is too ragged to form sound. He tells the Atlantic ocean about how you destroyed him, about his curtains and his copy of Titanic, about the number in his phone that he can't quite bring himself to delete, and about the goodbye he never got. He wonders( _he hopes_ ) maybe there’s someway you’ve heard him. You haven’t.

**Author's Note:**

> if you read this whole thing- 1: bless ur soul. 2: im sorry


End file.
